Red Dragon
by Lisalu-RDT
Summary: After the Buu Saga, an old enemy returns to destroy the Saiyains of Earth and take over the universe with the help of the Red Dragonballs.
1. Monster

**DISCLAIMER:**_ I don't own Dragon Ball Z or any of its associated characters or intellectual properties. All hail Toriyama, creator of the same._

WARNING: If you are under 18, go away!

This fic contains violence, strong sexual themes and situations, strong language, and touches on the deep, emotional scars of molestation. If any of this creeps you out, don't read this story.

* * *

Cold, white hands gripped him, holding him immobile and helpless. Hot, rank breath on the back of his neck, the stink of charnel houses. Sibilant, whispering laughter mocking him, mocking his weakness—he who had always been so strong. Grief and blood rage choked him, erupting in a guttural howl, as he struggled at first to break free, and finally to deny what was happening to him.

Pain was nothing to his kind. From the cradle he had been taught to welcome it as sharp affirmation that he was alive. He had cut his teeth on violence and death.

But this…

There had never been anything like this, never in the world!

Denial was stripped away from him, rage was beaten down. In the end, there way only grief and stomach clenching shame and betrayal that this, this, was what his father had given him over to. Out of fear.

Out of weakness.

Dignity laid waste, pride gone, all sense of safety destroyed forever. The adoration and near-worship of his father shattered and already souring into cold contempt.

"The wages of weakness, little prince," the voice chuckled in his ear.

A sob caught in his throat—the first tears he had ever shed—the last he would shed for nearly 20 years.

Black, talon-like nails sank into the bare flesh on his shoulders, piercing and tearing. "Don't cry, Vegita-chan," Lord Frieza purred. "I have a special place in my heart for children."

He jerked awake, bolting upright with a gasp, sweating and shaking.

Movement caught his eye and he summoned ki, raising his open hand—and stopped.

Wide eyes under a mop of blue bangs regarded him curiously. He relaxed slowly, lowered his hand. The child crawled onto the bed and into his lap.

"Bra?" His voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears. He'd come a hair's breath from killing her by accident. The absolute trust in the girl's sleepy smile as she looped her arms around his neck made something deep inside him constrict involuntarily.

"Poppa, you're squishing me," Bra said, squirming. He loosened his hold on her. He glanced at the bedside clock. 1:00am. "Bra, what are you doing up?"

"I heard you having a bad dream and it woke me up," she replied.

He frowned. At 3, his daughter's ki was disappointingly lower than her brother's had been at the same age, but her telepathic powers,unusually latent in both humans and Saiyans, seemed to be off the scale. The thought of Bra being subjected to the nightly horror show his dreams had become of late was not a pleasant one.

"Did you see my dream?" He asked carefully.

She shook her head. "No, I just felt you being hurt and afraid." One tiny hand patted his shoulder. "Poor Poppa."

He snorted. "It'll be poor Bra if your mother comes back from her party and finds you out of bed." He was feeling more normal with every passing second. "Did you break the nanny-bot thing again?"

"Not bad," Bra said evasively.

He carried her back down the hall to her bedroom, noting with a satisfied smirk the dozens of pieces of what had once been Bulma's nanny-bot project strewn about the room. The smiling nannyhead and core processor was imbedded into one wall at the center of a smoking, black burn mark that still sang with the memory of his daughter's ki.

It occurred to him suddenly that perhaps Bra was like Kakarott's first born, Gohan. The little bastard had shown only negligible ki at first. But when thrown into the mix of battle, when frightened or angered in any way, his power level had risen without precedent, seemingly without limit. Did that same potential sleep dormant inside his youngest child?

He sat her down on her bed. "Get into bed, Brat," he said quietly.

"I'm not a brat," she said, crawling under the covers, one arm curled around a stuffed dinosaur. "I'm a princess."

"That you are," he agreed, his face stony and expressionless. She smiled up at him, seeing effortlessly past the stoic warrior's mask. He pulled the quilt up around her more securely. He wasn't sure why; the room was perfectly warm.

Let your power sleep, he said silently. I would not awaken it with fear and death and danger for all the wealth in creation. I will commend to Hell's mercy anyone who tries.

"I had a bad dream last week," she murmured drowsily. She was almost asleep. "I dreamed about a monster."

"So did I," he whispered.

In his room, he washed his face and leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the bathroom mirror. He was averaging less an hour a night, now. He needed 3-4 at the very least.

Why now? he wondered. After 6, maybe 7 years of relatively peaceful sleep, why had these old, rotting corpses from his first life come back to haunt him? He closed his eyes tiredly, remembering….

Strong hands lifted him from the floor where he lay naked in a pool of blood, vomit and filth. There were voices around him, faint and indistinct. Dodoria's booming laugh cut through the dim buzz, chuckling about his "initiation." In his half-conscious state, he didn't remember when he was bathed, bandaged, and clothed. He did remember growling and lunging at the hand that slapped him back to full wakefulness. A big hand caught his small fist effortlessly.

"Easy, little soldier," Zarbon said.

Memory came flooding back and his snarl tapered down into a wounded animal's moan.

_"How old are you?" The blue-skinned warrior asked. The man slapped his face again, pulling him back as reality began to slide away again._

_"Nine standard years," he whispered._

_"It is Lord Frieza's common practice to break all the young ones who come unwillingly into his service," Zarbon told him conversationally._

_The man's lack of pity or mockery was an unlooked-for mercy. "Your body will heal, but your heart and mind will never forget who is the Master and who is the slave."_

_"I am no one's slave!" He rapped out._

_Zarbon sighed. "Listen to me, little prince of Vegita-sei. I am not your friend. If my master lifts one finger, I will gut you without a moments hesitation. But I will give you some advice. Nothing amuses my master so much as defiance. And the harder you defy him, the worse he will use you—until he has broken your spirit or broken your mind. If you continue to howl and rage at him, you will always be his favorite catamite." The blue warrior's lips twitched in a mirthless smile. "I was younger than you when he bought me from the slavers who destroyed my home world. Listen to the voice of experience, boy. Keep silent, obey, and grow strong. That is how you will survive."_

_"Grow strong," he repeated softly._

_"Zarbon?" He met the man's eyes for the first time. "I am hostage, according to treaty. Held in trust against my father's fealty to Lord Frieza…If I…" He swallowed, tasting bile. "If I obey and grow strong, my father and my people will be safe as well, yes?" Zarbon's face was unreadable. He nodded solomnly. "That's the deal, boy."_

It was 4 years before they told about the "meteor storm" that had destroyed his father and his world.

_Grow strong_, his mind whispered as his body shuddered with the shame and sick, helpless rage of the child he had been._ Grow strong…_

Those two words had shaped the man the child would become, had driven him beyond reason, beyond sanity, beyond any excepted definition of the word obsession. They had driven him to his own death not once, but twice.

"Why now?" He said aloud.

_You have never had so much to lose as you do now_, a voice whispered in the deepest recesses of his mind.

Grow strong…

Heh.

The only living being in the universe more powerful than himself was a blithering idiot who would no more harm those he held dear than…than he could carry on an intelligent conversation.

He shook himself irritably and stilled the involuntary trembling. He was the mightiest warrior in this or any other world…

Well…the mightiest with a full set of wits, anyway. And that was only for the moment, dammit! There had to be another level beyond SSJ3, and when he achieved it first, he would give Kakarott the beating of his miserable life!

He was strong enough to protect all that he had built; this good life he had built in spite of himself. He raised his head and gazed into the mirror-and cried out, his voice cracking like an adolescent's.

Frieza gazed back at him out of the mirror, his blood-hued lips curled into a saccharine smile. The voice, so full of sweet, insinuating malice…He knew that voice so well! This was no dream! No hallucination!

A wave of black energy rushed over his senses, so violent it bowled him over physically.

_"Soon, Vegita-chan,"_ the old monster chuckled softly in his head. _"Soon…"_

With a hoarse cry, he smashed the mirror and launched himself out the window.

* * *

The annual Capsule Corp profit share Gala was showing no sign of winding down. Research and Development had taken the lion's share of the bonus's this year and the entire department was rip-roaring drunk. Petr Smoliensk, the head of Moscow R&D, was leading a bunny hop line of nearly fifty people across the middle of the dance floor.

Bulma Briefs snickered. "No company built on the shoulders of scientists and inventors should ever try to be chic and trendy," she said aloud. Her father, venerable creator and owner of Cap Corp, was near the head of the bunny line.

"Are you sure I look all right?" Chi-chi self-consciously pulled down on the hem of the dress Bulma had lent her for the occasion. "I feel indecent."

Bulma smiled sunnily. "Modern fashion, Chi-chi." She was not completely plastered herself, but she was definitely tipsy. It had been a hectic, exhausting month. In two days, the planet's first line of non-military spaceships would be available of the open market, courtesy of Capsule Corp. Every government on Earth had fought them tooth and nail every inch of the way. "You're wearing a bra and your ass is covered," she hiccuped. "You're decent."

The look of veiled disapproval on the other woman's face brought her up short. She and Chi-chi had never been very close—they were as different as two women could be in most ways. They were bound together by mutual love for Goku and the close friendship of their sons, but Bulma never lost sight of the other woman's disapproval of her and her family. She changed the subject.

"So, are you going into private practice, or are you still deciding?"

"I'm not sure," Chi-chi said frowning. "Clinical psychology seemed very appealing when Goku was…gone. I finished the degree because it was something I had started. But…I think the happier you are, the less interesting other people's problems become. And I don't take Goku's presence for granted. I'm jealous of every moment we spend apart, because some part of me believes that our days together are numbered."

Bulma stared at her. She hadn't expected the other woman to pour out her own heart in answer to such a casual question. Chi-chi's gaze had turned across the room to where her husband and her oldest son were wreaking devastation upon the food bar, engrossed in conversation with one another between mouthfuls. Gohan's wife Videl had taken their new baby to visit her mother in Europe for a few weeks. Gohan, unable to leave university during mid-semester, had moved in with his parents until Videl's return. "They could almost be brothers," Bulma murmured. Goku had not aged since the day he had shown up at Kame House with a 5 year old Gohan in tow.

"How long do Saiyans live, I wonder," Chi-chi said, echoing her thoughts.

"I made the mistake of asking Vegeta that once," Bulma said wryly. "He said, 'Until we're killed.'"

They locked gazes, sharing unvoiced, unspoken thoughts. And burst out laughing.

A streak of lavender caught Bulma's peripheral mother's vision, and her hand snaked out and grabbed an ear. "Trunks, where are you going with that jar?"

Her son looked at her, all innocence. "Nowhere."

"We're gonna wait til people start to pass out, and stick big gobs of peanut butter in their ears!" Goten said brightly. At 12, he was already a head taller than his mother, but he yelped sharply when Chi-chi's hand clamped firmly down on his own ear.

As Chi-chi dragged Goten away, reprimanding loudly, Trunks smiled sheepishly and handed over the peanut butter jar. "Sorry, Mom."

Bulma sighed. "Mommy's very tired and plans to sleep for a week after this party's over, Trunks. Mommy is also ever-so-slightly drunk." The boy snickered. "I'll think up some appropriately hideous and boring chore for your punishment after that."

"'Kay."

"I need one man in this family I can have at company functions who won't inflict physical damage on my guests. Okay?"

Trunks laughed outright. He seemed to have grown another inch while she wasn't looking. Sweet Kami, was he really almost 13 years old?

"Okay, Mom." He looked sorrowfully at Goten. Chi-chi still hadn't released his ear. "I got him in trouble again."

"Yes, you did," she kissed him on the cheek. "He'll live. Be good. I've got to check on some things upstairs. And possibly throw up."

The room tilted pleasantly as she rode the elevator up to her suite in the office tower. Checking her laptop vidphone on her cluttered desk, she found no new messages. Good. No last minute hitches. She sank down into her chair and toyed with the bits of her last unofficial invention lying beside the vidphone like discarded jewelry. She twirled the two shiny metallic rings around her wrists like tine hoola-hoops, before encapsulating them and shoving them into her dress pocket. What should she call it? Transport? Telemat? Matterporter? Hmm. Better to think of a name when she was completely sober.

She really should go over to the family wings of the compound and check on Bra. She was starting to think that market testing the Nanny-Bot proto-type on her daughter was a huge mistake. She had not spent enough time with her youngest child—with any of her family, for that matter—in the last few weeks, and Bra was voicing her displeasure in a very Saiyan fashion. Bulma wondered with a faint chill if the toddler would have torn the arms off of a human baby-sitter the way she'd done the Nanny-bot.

She smiled in spite of herself.

She had known her children would have some measure of inherent violent behavior—known it from the word go. She pulled the scarflette—one of a collection she'd taken to wearing habitually over the years—from her neck. Her fingers lightly touched a fading mark on her throat. The first time she had noticed such a mark on Bulma's throat, her mother her had told her something in her airy, slightly unfocused way, which Bulma had never forgotten. If you lie down with wild things, Dear, expect to get bitten. She spun her chair around to look down from the office tower's sparkling view of the city below, lost in memory. Vegeta had definitely been a wild thing the first time he had come to her. Rough was not an adequate word to describe their first encounter.

_After weeks of her taunting, teasing sexual overtures, he had silently followed her back to her quarter of the compound. He had taken her without ceremony, without preamble, without a word. He turned her away from him with a low growl, bent her forward over the foot of her own bed, and brutally thrust into her. He pounded her nearly senseless for over an hour; she came four times, the last time screaming. She had pursued him looking for something hard core and rough and, by Kami, he had given it to her in spades. Afterwards, bruised, aching and bleeding, she turned and gently pushed him down on the bed while he was still shuddering in he wake of his own release. Her heart was still hammering in her chest with kinky excitement and the very real danger of this vicious, half-mad animal she had taken to her bed. This half-mad animal she meant to tame._

_"Lie back and let me do the work this time," she whispered. "Let me show you another way."_

_"Don't tell me what to do, bitch," he rasped. Then she took him in her mouth and his snarl turned to a gasp. She teased and stroked him with gentle tongue and teeth and fingers, drawing out the sweet torture, reveling in the way he arched his back and bit back a cry when he came in her mouth. He was ready again almost instantly, and she straddled him, pulling him up into a sitting position. She eased him into her sore body with maddening slowness. His eyes, almost invisible pools of black in the dark room, bored into her, and for the first time, she thought she saw something unguarded in their depths. She moved slowly on him, touching every part of his body, always gently, always following the touch of her hand with her lips. She built him up, increasing her speed with agonizing slowness, and when they both crested together, he cried out like a man who'd just received a mortal wound, crushing her to him. She was wrapped around him just as tightly, shaken by a dawning realization that what she had played at this evening was no longer a game—should never have been a game with him._

_He still held her in a vise-like embrace, as though he thought she might be snatched from his arms at any moment. Years later, many years later, he would tell her in a horribly toneless voice about the first girl, the only other girl he had been with. She had been a year older than him, the daughter of one of the camp followers, mercenary whores who grew rich off of Frieza's legions. Adolescent experimentation had led to sex almost accidentally. Dodoria, the bloated pink sadist, Frieza's second lieutenant, had indeed snatched the girl from the 14-year-old Vegeta's arms and torn her into two pieces before his eyes._

_But now his fingers traveled over the crimson, crescent-shaped wounds on her shoulders where his finger nails had gouged into her during their first time. The dull look of shock that flickered briefly behind his eyes told her he hadn't even been aware he had been doing it._

_Her hand traced the almost identical set of scars of his shoulders. There was more than one set, marring the otherwise perfect, inhumanly smooth skin. She would have many years to ponder the meaning of those faded marks. They were old, but they were very, very deep. She touched her lips to his softly, then kissed his face. He frowned at her in confusion._

_"It doesn't have to hurt," she said softly. " It can be just pleasure."_

_"Woman, you…" His voice was unsteady. He stoked her cheek with one finger. "Woman, you talk too much," he said finally. Then he pulled her down and lay her beside him as though she were made of glass._

_Wrapping his arms around her, gently this time, he had fallen asleep with the quick ease of a long time soldier who slept when he lay for a long time gazing at his face, shaken to the bone by the unexpected emotion welling up inside of her. What the hell, she wondered, had she just gotten herself into?_

A long, rocky road to happiness, she thought, gazing at the city lights without really seeing them. A year of being his lover, wordlessly working compromises between his violent ferocity and her gentle skill, before he would speak more than a few words to her as they lay together in the darkness afterwards. Years before he would show her anything other than scorn and contempt in the light of day, unable to fathom that the men he had killed when he first came to Earth—Piccolo and Tien in particular—would not kill her and Trunks if they knew he gave a damn about them. Unable to admit even to himself, that he did give a damn about them. Years more, until the Buu holocaust had stripped away all he had unwillingly come to cherish, leaving the man he had been shattered in a thousand subtle ways in its wake.

She would like to think she had rebuilt him this time. But she knew that the man she now shared her life with was his own creation—perhaps for he first time in his life. Not of his father's making, nor Frieza's, not even hers.

Vegeta was not normal. He was not nice or sociable or friendly or remotely easy to get along with. But she knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that her loved her and their children more than his own life, though he never said the words. He was-

She bit back a shrill shriek.

-He was right behind her.

"Vegeta, you son of a bitch! You scared—"

"Do you trust me?" He said harshly.

"Yes," she said without hesitation. She took in his appearance. He was dressed only in the black cotton gi pants he wore for sleep, his face pale and drawn. His eyes were black pinpoints; they looked desperate. No, she amended. They looked terrified. "What—"

He cut her off. "Trunks and Goten are watching Bra. They're waiting in the Crane prototype in your mother's garden. Let's go!" He pulled her toward the window.

"Where are we going?" She half-shouted in exasperation.

"We're leaving."

"Leaving the house?"

"Leaving this godless planet, woman!" He saw the look on her face and took a deep breath. Taking her face between his hands, he kissed her mouth softly. "Listen to me. A moment ago, I felt a surge of was not ki. It was like the rush of power when Shen Long is summoned. Only greater. A power level so high I could not take the measure of it. And it was familiar. Come!" Before she could protest, he scooped her up and bulleted out the window, landing in the rose garden beside the Crane 1000, the first prototype of Cap Corp's new starship line. He sat her on her feet, and checked the launch sequence timer on the forward landing strut. He cursed impatiently. "She still needs 5 more minutes to power up for launch. Get on board!"

"Vegeta!" Goku, with Gohan at his side, was striding across the grass toward them, all traces of the half-bright man-child she had known since her youth thrown off like well worn suit. Bulma felt a wave of dread rush over her. This was the man Son-kun might have been, the man Gokou would only force himself to become when things were at their most perilous. The sight of her old friend in full possession of his wits scared her more than the real fear in her husband's face.

"I know!" Vegeta said. "I felt it too."

"You're running away?" Goku said in honest amazement. The lack of recrimination in his voice seemed to infuriate Vegeta more. "Vegeta, Earth needs—"

"Fuck Earth," Vegeta said succinctly"Fuck everyone on it, and fuck you too, Kakarott." Goku blinked. "I'm taking my family off this mudball. If you are capable of remembering that far back, you'll recall that they didn't exactly survive Earth's last catastrophe intact!" He stopped, reigning himself in with great effort. "I'm taking Bulma and Bra some place safe. I know a dozen out of the way planets to hide them on. Trunks and I will be back to fight. We've got three minutes before the ship's ready. Grab that screeching harpy you're mated to, Kakarott, and we'll take her with us as well."

"You're right, Vegeta." Goku smiled grimly and nodded. "He has no honor. He might come after our families to get at us. Don't worry, though. We won't defeat him until you get back!"

"Defeat who?!" Bulma almost screamed.

"Frieza," Vegeta said after a brief silence. "Somehow he's found a way out of Hell."

"But…he should be nothing to you now. Any one of you could take him out almost instantly." Bulma looked at the bleak faces of the three Saiyans. "…couldn't you?

Gohan spoke up. "The old Frieza, yes. But something's changed. His energy…it's beyond imagining. It's…"

"Infinite," Vegeta finished.

The world spun crazily and went black.

"Wake up, Bulma! Wake up, we need you!" Someone was slapping her face hard enough to sting. Bulma opened her eyes to see Chi-Chi hovering over her anxiously. Somewhere close by, there was a low, rolling boom, followed closely by another. The ground beneath her shook violently with each detonation.

"What happened?" She asked shakily.

"It's Vegeta," Chi-Chi said hurriedly.

Nearby, above the smoking crater where her mother's cherry orchard had been, three small suns were revolving crazily in the air, illuminating the night around them.

"Power down!" Goku's voice came from the center of the inferno. "Dammit, Vegeta! Power down! We'll shake the planet apart if we keep this up much longer.!"

In the eye of the fiery maelstrom, Goku and Gohan seemed to be barely restraining Vegeta, who whirled and thrashed madly. All three were powered up beyond first level Super Saiyan and the world was indeed shuddering under the strain each time Vegeta lashed out and the other two Saiyans countered.

"You don't realized what's happened!" Vegeta screamed hoarsely. "You don't—" There was another deafening boom. Bulma heard a musical tinkling as every window in the compound, perhaps in the city, shattered.

"Vegeta!" Gohan's voice. "Bulma's less than 30 meters away! You're putting her in danger! Power down!" The young man's calm measured voice, so much older than his years, seemed to penetrate Vegeta's unthinking rage where Gokou's had only inflamed it. The deadly golden light around the three men faded as they slowly levitated to the ground. Vegeta stood motionless between the two Sons, who watched him warily. He looked like he was holding the madness that had gripped him a moment before by a thin frayed thread. Then his eyes found hers. He held her gaze for one brief second, then look away and sagged to his knees as though he'd been dealt some debilitating blow. Bulma fought down rising panic.

What, oh sweet Kami, What had just happened?

She stared at Chi-Chi's tear-streaked face, and Goku, Gohan, and Vegeta, all grim and terrible as untimely death. Then she saw it.

The Crane 1000 showpiece Vegeta had been prepping for launch was gone. Gone…

"The kids," she whispered. "Frieza's taken them."


	2. The Hunt

"The kids," Bulma whispered. "Frieza's taken them."

Chi-Chi sounded choked. "My little Goten as well."

Goku patted her awkwardly. "We'll get them back, Chi-Chi," He said. "They can't have gotten far."

Bulma turned to Vegeta. He stood beside her still and motionless as granite, his face blank and cold. Hold it together, girl, she told herself, because he's very close to losing it completely.

"I have the Crane commercial passenger prototype decapsulated in in hanger three," she said steadily. "It's bigger and faster than anything I've ever built."

All the mens' heads snapped up in unison. "Piccolo!" Gohan said. only Goku didn't look surprised.

"I've got some news about our old pal Frieza's recent visit." The Namek's telepathic voice echoed deep inside her head, making Bulma flinch with surprise. From the look on Chi-Chi's face she was hearing him also. "It's bad," he said bluntly. "Some of this you'll have already figured out. Somewhere, somehow, some galaxy class intellect thought it would be a plan to wish Frieza back to life."

"Did they use the Namekian dragon balls?" Goku asked.

"I wish," Piccolo growled. "We think these dragon balls were made by a Namek named Daruma. He was a wanderer like me, but he would have been ancient by the time I was born. And when I say I, I mean Kami and myself, before we split. Which means he remembers craft secrets that were lost eons ago. So, forget all the rules for any set of dragon balls you've ever dealt with. He wrote his own rules for the Red Dragon Balls and we still don't know what they are. He was also a real bastard. So was the dragon he conjured. Anything you wish for with these babies will turn to evil. Red Soraku decides how to fulfill the wish and he'll find a way to twist it against you."

Gohan frowned. "You mean like if you wish to be rich, for instance, someone you love would die and you'd collect a fortune in insurance?"

Piccolo's dry mental chuckle. "That sounds about right, kid."

"Sound like this Soraku has a nasty sense of humor," Goku said.

"Dende's sources think Frieza was wished back by the last remnants of his own people, the Tsiru-jin."

Vegeta cursed viciously. "I knew I hadn't gotten them all!" Everyone stared. "After Namek was destroyed, before Kakarott returned to Earth, I paid a visit to Planet Frieza where the old lizard quartered most of his legions and a great many of his own folk. I did not leave so much as an insect alive, but I knew there were other Tsiru-jin out there. I should have hunted them down! They're royal house is deity in their eyes. I should have known they would do something to try and resurrect him!" Bulma put a comforting hand on his arm, and he jerked away from her touch angrily. She swallowed hard, beating the tears down ruthlessly. In half an hour, her seemed to have regressed ten years.

"How did he get so strong?" She asked, tearing her eyes away from her husband.

"Daruma's dragon balls come with five wishes," Piccolo replied. "We think his people used the first one to wish him back. Then he used the second one to wish for power—anything he wished for would be turn to evil, but I guess because he's evil himself, the dragon didn't screw him. He wished for the power of a god, people. If we could quantify how strong he is now, it'd be something on the order of Super Saiyan 7 now, if there were such a thing. And the third wish to wish all his armies back."

"There's no time limit on how long the people you wish back with these dragon balls can have been dead?" Gohan sounded startled.

"You got it, kid. This new Frieza's not the same pasty little bastard we all knew and loved. He has the almost limitless power of a Kai now, but is subject to none of the celestial laws that bar the Kais from excessive interference in the physical plain. And he still has one more wish under his belt." Piccolo paused. Bulma had the sense that he was receiving information from a third party. "Okay, listen up people. Dende's tied up right now in a fifty-way conference call. We've got a rogue Kai and an evil dragon on our hands, and this is one of the few exception where the gods get to throw down and personally take action."

"The gods are going to war," Chi-Chi murmured.

"Not if we can help it," Piccolo said. "Dende and I are both of the opinion that there may not be very much left in the aftermath of such a battle." A pause. "I've got to go, soon. The hotheads are starting to gang up on Dende. "Goku, Vegeta—Daruma is the key. He's the only one who knows how the Red Dragon Balls work and Frieza's last wish and their power will be directly tied to his life. Dende won't tell you this but I will. No Daruma, no dragon balls, no more wishes. It won't solve all our problems, but it'll pull a couple of his teeth. And it might keep the Kais out of this if Red Soraku's out of the picture."

"Daruma dies only after he's told us all the secrets of his dragon balls," Vegeta nodded, his eyes burning.

Goku shook his head. "I know what you're saying Piccolo, but I won't do it. Tracking down Daruma and killing him is still murder."

"Fine by me," Vegeta snapped.

"You two can argue about it on the way," Chi-Chi said sharply. "The first priority is getting our children back safely!"

Something had been tickling the back of Bulma's mind. Something That didn't quite add up. "What happened to the forth wish?" She asked. everyone's eyes turned to her. "The Tsiru-jin used the first one to wish Frieza back and Frieza used the second to wish for strength and the third to wish back all his soldiers. And Piccolo said he still has one more wish. So, what happened to the forth wish?"

There was a long silence. Piccolo finally spoke again. "That's the final thing I have to tell you. He took your kids and left you all alive for revenge. Because he wanted to hurt Goku and Vegeta, and leave them alive for a while to go on hurting."

"Get on with it!" Vegeta said harshly.

"He planned this out very carefully, I think. You know you'll be walking into a trap."

"We still have to go,"Goku replied. "I don't believe in traps, anyway. There's always a way to win. We just have to find it."

Piccolo was silent a moment longer. "Then I need to prepare you for what you'll find. The blackout you all experienced was the forth wish. It was the result of a temporal shift. Frieza used his wish to take this entire solar system and everything in it outside of the temporal plane and set it down in another point in time. Frieza hasn't had your kids for fifteen minutes or even fifteen hours. He's had them for fifteen years."

* * *

The two Saiyan warriors stood side by side watching the small, blue-green planet they called home slowly recede from sight. From the galley just the Crane passenger ship's elaborate bridge, the soft burr of conversation between Chi-Chi and Gohan drifted toward them.

"…couldn't catch them in, to tell Videl what's going on," Gohan murmured.

"…know she'd understand…" Chi-Chi's subdued voice.

"Chi-Chi's cooking something special," Goku said after a long silence. "She says it's one of her 'coping mechanisms'."

Vegeta grunted. Behind them at the navigation console, Bulma's presence on the edges of his consciousness was a bright spark of pain. She had won her fight to come with them, beating down his angry refusals with stony logic. Her technical genius might give them a needed edge at some vital moment. That and the fact that nowhere in the galaxy would she be safe from Frieza, now. The others had watched the argument escalate, waiting for the explosion that never came. In the end, he had simply turned his back on her coldly and said in an icy, disinterested voice, "Do whatever you want, Woman." He wrenched his thoughts away from the memory of the hurt in her face. He backed away from it. He could feel his mind methodically shutting down his emotions one by one, going cold. A part of him was relieved. There was no comfort in the numbness, but at least he could function. Maybe that was his 'coping mechanism.'

"I've found her," Bulma said quietly. A year ago, Bulma had planted a microscopic tracking device in one of Bra's first molars (Saiyan children never lost there milk teeth.) She had done this in a fit of frustration and worry after losing the highly mobile baby in the enormous Capsule compound for the third time in one day. "A bit of tweaking," Bulma had said, was all that was needed to trace the girl half-way across the galaxy. "I made a couple of course corrections over the last hour so I could cross-reference the readouts from the tracer," she said. She glanced up at Goku blank face. "Bra's right here," she pointed to the X on the computer's star chart.

Vegeta checked the coordinates. "Mardran," he murmured.

"Do you know it?" Bulma did not look up from the read out.

"I've been there," he said shortly. "Low population, but very rich. The Madrani design, manufacture and broker weapons."

"They don't sound very nice," Kakarott said.

"They did their work and kept to themselves," Vegeta replied. "That's all I know about them."

"I've laid in the course," Bulma said. "We should be there in 12 hours. I'm going to try to get some rest." She stood and left the bridge without a backward look.

"Supper should almost be ready. Are you hungry?" Kakarott's voice sounded so normal and calm Vegeta fought the urge to strike him.

"No."

The big idiot eyed him doubtfully as the concept were utterly alien to him. "Vegeta, you'll need to keep your strength up for this fight. Frieza will have some pretty nasty tricks up his sleeve, if I know him."

"You don't know a damn thing about Frieza, Kakarott!" Vegeta rasped. "You never did!"

"I know everything you know." Vegeta's head snapped around. Kakarott met his eyes guilelessly. "From when we fused, remember? You had all my thoughts and I had all of yours. You told me afterwards that you thought you might have nightmares about Chi-Chi for the rest of your life, and I said I didn't blame you because Chi-Chi can be really scary sometimes when she gets angry—"

"I was talking about your wedding night, you brainless, low-class imbecile!" Kakarott frowned slightly, but regarded him without anger. "If you know everything…" He turned away from the other Saiyan, his whole body trembling with conflicting rushes of emotion.

"I remember when you first came to Earth," Kararott went on. "You seemed to really enjoy being evil, but when my mind touched yours a couple of time while we were fighting, it was like…" He paused, searching for words that were beyond his vocabulary. "… Like you'd swallowed a bunch of razors and they were cutting you to pieces on the inside. I know it'll be bad, Vegeta, but maybe not as bad as you think. They're not alone, like you were. They have each other and the memory of our love. You can survive almost anything if you have love."

"Kakarott, Bra was three years old," he began. He choked the words off and the anger rose up, burning down the pain as it always seemed to. He rounded on the bigger Saiyan, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. "How can you stand there so calmly, Kakarott?! Blithering about love and togetherness when your child has been in the hands of a monster for fifteen years! When you know—" He stopped, shaking the fool until his teeth rattled. "Where is your anger, Kakarott? Where is your hate?!"

Kakorott laid a hand on his own heart.. His brows drew down and together. "In here," he tapped his chest gently. His voice, that irritating adolescent-sounding alto, had dropped a full octave. "I'm saving it all for Frieza," Kakarott told him in a deathly quiet voice. Vegeta stared into the bigger man's eyes, chilled. For an instant, something burning and terrible had flickered there. "I've never felt hate before, Vegeta." Kakarott told him. "It hurts."

"Goku!" Chi-Chi's voice came faintly from the galley. Kakarott seemed to shake himself, though he didn't move. He gazed at Vegeta politely until the Saiyan prince realized he was still gripping the other man's arms tightly. He let go and stepped back.

"Cooking for me makes Chi-Chi feel better when she's upset," Kakarott said in his normal voice. "That must be what "coping mechanism" means." He looked inordinately pleased that he had puzzled this out. "Are you sure you're not hungry, Vegeta?"

Vegeta shook his head mutely. It never failed to stun him, how the man could change like that. Kakarott was already moving away, being pulled irresistibly by his stomach. "Chi-Chi always gives me a hug after she's yelled at me," he said almost absently as he walked away. "After that, everything's all right again. It's nice to have someone to love, isn't it, Vegeta?"

* * *

Vegita opened the door to their cabin and undressed quietly in the dark. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Bulma lay turned away from him, tears drying on her face. She wasn't asleep. He reached down and turned her gently, pulling her up into his arms. One finger traced the faint streaks her tears had made, brushing them away.

"I need you, Vegeta," she whispered. "Please don't shut me out."

He pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her softly. He hadn't known what a kiss was until she'd taught him. She returned the embrace, hesitantly at first, then with growing intensity. His hands found their way under the white cotton top she wore, touching soft skin. She shrugged out of her underwear and he pulled the tank over her head. Wrapping both arms and legs around him, she pulled him down onto her with surprising strength. "I need you, Vegeta," she said again.

He had meant to take a long time, to make love to her slowly and gently, the way she liked it. But the feverish, almost desperate look on her face changed his mind. He threaded each of his hands through hers and thrust fully into her in one smooth motion. She gasped and bowed her back, shuddering as he filled her up completely, banishing thought and pain for both of them, if only for now. He moved inside her, hard and fast, giving her what she demanded, exhausting release and the deep, irrefutable reassurance of his presence throughout every inch of her. Something seemed to break fatally inside him at the end. The old comfortable wall he'd been resurrecting around himself, that he'd never demolished completely, shattered into a million sharp fragments. Feeling came rushing back over him in a crushing wave and all that he had shut down and shut out rose up and struck him with the force of a hammer, leaving him naked and defenseless in her arms.

Bulma lay quietly spent beneath him, her heart already slowing. One hand gently disengaged his and caressed the back of his neck. His head was resting in the soft hollow between her neck and shoulder. He made no move to draw away, simply lay silent and still above and within her. He didn't seem to be breathing until she felt a faint tremor run through his body, and he took a short sharp hitch of breath. She swallowed the sob that rose in her throat when she felt the wetness on her shoulder where his face lay buried. She said nothing. There were no words of comfort that would not shame him, and none that were sufficient. So, she held him silently in the darkness. They held each other against the grief the next twenty-four hours might bring. Sleep never came, but whatever horrors or battles lay before them, neither of them would face it alone.


	3. Midran

The ship set down in the charred blasted remains of what had once been Madran's capital city.

"My goodness!" Chi-Chi exclaimed, surveying the wreckage around them. Gohan hung anxiously close to his mother, scanning the burned-out buildings for danger. Vegeta snorted. The boy's strength would be an asset in this suicide rescue mission of theirs, but his fear for the fool woman's safety might paralyze him at some critical moment.

Bulma adjusted the tracer and turned due east. Her strained, tired face looked hopeful. "She's less than 10 kilometers from here, somewhere in these ruins."

"I wondered what happened here?" Gohan muttered. "Whatever is was it was recent."

"Who gives a damn!" Vegeta demanded. "Let's go get her!" He scooped Bulma up, tracer and all, and shot upward. The others followed suit, all flying low to the ground. The signal grew steadily stronger as they neared the center of the city. Bulma re calibrated one more time.

"There," she pointed the instrument directly at the husk of what had once been a temple or maybe a school. It was more intact than any of the other structures around it. Vegeta sat her on her feet in the arched doorway. He ripped the melted slag of the door off its hinges and stepped inside first.

It had been a temple. Young and old, entire families, had crammed inside hoping for some divine protection from the attack they must have known was coming. It hadn't saved them. A huge circular section of the roof was caved in and shafts of bright sunshine illuminated what lay around them all too well. Everyone who had not taken refuge below ground when the blast hit had been roasted alive. Bulma drew in a sharp breath. Then she set her jaw firmly and began picking her way through the still smoking remains.

Kakarott, looming behind him in the doorway, glanced back and caught his son's eye. The younger Son said something in a hushed voice to his mother, blocking her view of what lay past the temple door.

The tracer's signal had risen to a shrill shriek as it closed in on its target. Bulma knelt down and Vegeta watched, frozen, as she pulled a white, crimson-tipped tooth out of the ashes. He caught her just before she sagged to the floor. She made no sound, only beat against his chest with one clenched fist as he held her against him. When she did finally make some sort of noise, it was an angry, full-throated howl of rage. Vegeta closed his eyes, and the image came to him, unbidden, of Bra lying safe and snug in her bed, smiling up at him.

_I dreamed about a monster, Poppa._

A shadow fell across his face.

"Sounds like someone strangling a cat," a rough voice snickered. Ringed around the edge of the hole in the ceiling, a dozen hulking silhouettes peered down at them.

Vegeta uttered an incoherent roar and hurled himself up at them. He was beyond all thought, beyond all reason, beyond recognizing the too-familiar armor worn by all of Frieza'a soldiers. There was nothing but the mindless, burning need to kill. He didn't bother with ki blasts, he simply began pounding and slashing with his bare hands. His hand seared through a living chest, seizing the fluttering heart within, smashing it to pulp. He whirled and gripped another enemy's head, ripping it off and hurling it like a missile through the stomach of a third. Somewhere on the ground, Kakarott and his son were beating down another knot of warriors with short, controlled bursts, firing with just enough power to stun, not kill.

_Good_, Vegeta thought, _All the more for me!_ He spun wildly in the air, rending and pummeling everything in sight. All sense of time ceased to exist, until he realized, through the red din of the killing rage, that he was alone. They were all dead. With a cheated snarl, he dove toward the clump of figures on the ground. Kakarott and his brat were hunched over one last survivor, and Bulma and Chi-Chi were approaching the scene of the fight hesitantly. Vegeta landed hard and stared into the prisoner's battered face.

"Zarbon," he rasped. He raised one finger, and a tiny witchlight of energy pooled on the tip. "I will thank Frieza before I kill him, for giving me the chance to kill you twice."

"Vegeta, wait!" Gohan cried. "He may know how to find Goten and Trunks!"

"Oh, he will tell us where they are," Vegeta agreed softly. He released the dot of ki, searing the flesh on Zarbon's left foot below the ankle. He was rewarded with a hoarse scream.

"Vegeta, listen to me!" Zarbon hissed through clenched teeth.

"Stop it, Vegeta!" Kakarott stepped between him and the blue-skinned warrior. "He wasn't with Frieza's men. I think he was their prisoner."

"I know what he is," Vegita said balefully. "Get out of my way, Kakarott!"

Something hard slammed into him from behind, bowling him over. He righted himself, seeing Kakarott and Gohan picking themselves up off the ground as well. Beside him now, Bulma gasped, and he followed her gaze to the armored figure who now stood between them and Zarbon. He stared frozen in shock at the young woman whose face was very nearly a mirror of Bulma's, surrounded in the glow of her own Super Saiyan aura.

"Don't you touch my father, you son of a bitch!" Bra said.

-

Vegeta stared into the angry blue eyes of his youngest child, and the madness that infused him moments before seemed to drain out of him. The look he leveled at Zarbon was still murderous, but he seemed to have regained control. Bulma suppressed a shudder. No matter what the circumstances, it was terrifying to watch Vegeta kill so ruthlessly.

She laid a gentle hand on his arm and stepped between him and Bra. "No one's going to hurt Zarbon, Bra. I promise I won't let them." She kept her voice even with effort. She eyed the energy cuffs that bound the blue-skinned man's hands and feet together. "I can take those off of him." She reached slowly toward the tool belt around her waist. "I've also got a medical kit. Someone should see to his wounds."

Bra eyed her with open suspicion.

"You can trust her, love," Zarbon told the girl quietly.

Bulma moved past her daughter, who was still powered up, blocking the men's access to her "father". She knelt beside the injured warrior, and after a quick examination, popped the cuffs with a negative pulse wrench. "You," she told him as she set about treating the burn on His foot, "Need to start explaining yourself right now."

The flawless, beautiful face that had made her blush like a school girl so many years ago, smiled ruefully up at her. "I suppose to begin? Bra-?" His voice softened noticeably. "Come sit down beside me and this pretty lady."

Bra backed up cautiously and knelt beside him, never taking her eyes off Vegeta. "He hurt you, Father," she said.

Vegeta cursed viciously at the girl's use of the word "father".

"Vegeta, stop it," Bulma said quietly. Her eyes never left Zarbon's. "I think we may have a great deal to thank him for. You rescued her, didn't you? Why?"

Zarbon stared at her in surprise. Then he sighed. "I'd already made up my mind to bolt before they ever took the kids. One lifetime in Frieza's service was enough for me. When they brought the children on board Frieza's cruiser, the boys nearly tore the ship apart. They almost got away three or four times during the first few hours. By the time we put in at the hub space port on Skilda, the ship was in pandemonium. Everything was on fire or being blown apart, Frieza was laughing his ass off watching the boys kill his own men, like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. My Madrani contact had just signaled me it was now or never if I was going to jump ship. And in the midst of this unbelievable shit storm, I looked down and saw Bra. No one was paying any attention to her in all the chaos. She looked up at me and raised her arms for me to pick her up, and I just…I just grabbed her and ran."

He glanced at Bra. "I still don't really know why. She's been nothing but a pain in the ass from day one." Bra made a face at him. "Put it down to a gesture to childhood. I was a child in Frieza's court, just like Vegiea." He and Vegita exchanged an unreadable look and Vegeta nodded grimly in silent thanks to the other man. "Anyway," Zarbon went on, "while Frieza began gobbling up system after system of free worlds, we managed to hook up with a kind of underground. The Madrani were part of the network. They had developed a mechanism that allows us to hide in from our enemies in plain sight. Bra and I set down a couple of hours ago and found this. We split up to look for the Mastertech, sort of the planet's head scientist. I found him and his team, or what was left of them. Someone had spent a lot of time getting info out them."

"Do you think it was the SPE specs they were after?" Bra asked anxiously.

"I hope not, love. Whoever tortured the Mastertech to death got what they wanted and left. The ones who jumped us were just Frieza's standard clean up crew. None of them were powerful enough to fry a huge city like this in seconds." He smiled without any humor. "You can all come back to Haven, our base world. I think we might be able to help each other. But if Frieza has the plans to our camouflage engine, we may all simply die together." He scanned their faces. "Now that I've answered a couple of your questions, maybe you wouldn't mind answering one for me. What the hell are the lot of you still doing alive? I thought Frieza had atomized you and Earth's's entire system a few seconds after the Ginyu returned from their little kidnapping expedition."

"You're from Earth?" Bra sounded startled. "That was my home planet! Father's right, Frieza blew it up 15 years ago…" She broke off, staring at Bulma.

"No," her mother shook her head. "Frieza used one of his wishes to displace the entire solar system temporally. Your 15 years ago was yesterday to us."

"I know you, don't I?" Bra said in a small voice.

"Oh baby," Bulma reached out and tried to embrace the girl, but Bra drew back in confusion.

Vegeta turned away from the dull look of hurt on his wife's face, to Zarbon. "Tell her," he said coldly.

Zarbon took Bra's hand and pulled her gently back toward Bulma. "Look at her, Bra. You were right. You do know her." Bra gazed intently at her mother, and one hand crept up the older woman's face hesitantly as she processed all the information she had received in the last few minutes.

"M.. Mom…" the girl asked, trembling. "Mama…You're my Mama!"

"Baby," Bulma took the sobbing girl in her arms. "Oh, Bra, shhh."

"I remember," Bra told her. "I was afraid you'd be mad at me when you got back from your party, because I murdered Nanny-Bot!" Bulma burst out laughing through tears. "I remember that night…" Bra repeated. She trailed off again, her eyes finding Vegeta. "Poppa."

Vegeta knelt beside her, and regarded his daughter. His features shifted minutely, softening into a look he only ever directed at his wife and daughter. Her left cheek was swollen and bruised. He touched it lightly with one gloved finger.

"One of them got in a lucky swing," she told him. "I think I lost a couple of teeth."

Vegeta chuckled. "At least one. It's how we were tracking you." The girl looked confused, but he didn't bother to explain. He frowned at the blast-scored, dented, much-used armor she wore. "I would not have taught you to fight unless you wished it."

"Necessity wished it," Zarbon interjected. He stood shakily. "We need to have this family reunion elsewhere. Is the ship still cloaked?" He asked Bra.

"They blew it to pieces," Bra said.

"We have a ship," Bulma said firmly. "We can take you to your resistance base."

Zarbon laughed, shaking his head. "I 'd like to think we were a resistance, but mostly it's about hiding as many people and worlds as quickly as we can."

In spite of herself, Bulma was very nearly salivating with scientific curiosity. "Hiding whole worlds! How—"

"Later," Vegeta said. "Let's get back to the ship and out of this system first."

Bulma laid in the coordinates Zarbon had give her, watching her daughter anxiously hover over the blue warrior's wounds. Vegeta stood a little removed from everyone else, but she sensed the conflicting emotions inside him roiling just beneath the surface. Thankfulness that the man had saved Bra from Frieza and the dull glower of hatred that he had taught her to call him "father". There was some other tension between the two men as well. She had the sense that it was in some way related to the years they had spent in Frieza's service, the part of his past Vegeta never spoke of. It occurred to her that, in some ways, Zarbon knew more about her husband than she did herself.

Finally, Chi-Chi voiced the question they had all been thinking.

"What about the boys? What do you know about my Goten and Trunks?"

Bra stiffened and Zarbon's face went carefully blank. Bulma tried to steel herself for the worst. "When they were first brought on board," Zarbon said slowly, "Frieza told them that you had all used Earth's dragon balls to wish yourselves and the planet to safety. That their parents had abandoned them because their lives weren't worth the lives of everyone on Earth." The silence from the earth Saiyans was deathly still and cold. "I thought it was a load of green Namek shit myself, something he told the boys to demoralized them, and that he'd actually blow you all to the far side of Hell. But a kid might believe it-like a kid might believe a "meteor storm" had destroyed his home-world by ill chance." Vegieta looked sick.

Gohan finally spoke. "What kind of mind would make up a story like that?"

"Frieza's," Vegeta hissed.

"Are they alive?" Goku asked softly. Chi-Chi glanced at him and then away quickly. There was enough anger in that calm question to crack worlds in half, to snuff out suns like a flame blown out at a candle's wick

"They are Frieza's destroyers," Zarbon said finally. "His two-headed angel of death. We've met them only once, when our last base world was discovered 3 years ago. They led the attack—no one was spared. We survived because, at the last second, Trunks recognized Bra. He sort of froze for a moment."

"I'd like to think Trunks let us go," Bra said. "But it may have just been surprise that made him hesitate—just long enough for me to knock him cold."

"We only know what little we've seen and what we've heard from other survivors of conquered worlds," Zarbon continued. "Goten fights like a machine, he's completely controlled and merciless in battle and cold and rational off the field. Trunks…The day our base on Arbatsu fell, he was gentle and kind to one set of captives, then tore them limb from limb a few moments later for no discernible reason. He was erratic and unpredictable and horribly, horribly powerful. And his own men feared him. Goten was the only one who seemed to be able to get through to him or bridle him in any way. Trunks is…"

"Trunks is mad." Bra said flatly. "Whether is was Frieza's doing or thinking he'd been left to his fate by all of you, Trunks is completely crazy."

-

The young man approached the glimmering white throne and knelt in calm obeisance. The spikes of his short-cropped, jet black hair were smoking slightly from the warning blast that had just sung past his left ear. The Tsiru-jin courtiers and guards circled like piranha, hissing with outrage that the warrior had come unannounced and summoned into their master's presence. A pale hand motioned minutely, staying his execution, and they went still.

For all the reaction the dark warrior showed, he might have been praying alone in some tranquil temple grove. A metallic eye-patch covered the blasted socket where his left eye had been and the red lens of his scouter covered the right, making it difficult to discern his expression. His deceptively light, youthful voice was calm and measured.

"I live to serve you, Lord."

The White Hall within the royal palace of Tsiru-sei was a pristine sculpture of exquisite beauty, wrought in ivory, ice, and the intricately carved bones of ancient enemies. Every whisper of a sound carried and echoed in the hollow emptiness around him. A soft snicker reached his ears, a bare wisp of sound. He raised his head slowly, his breath hanging ghostlike in the frozen air. His gaze was respectfully lowered, not meeting the eyes of the creature who sat on the ice throne.

"A world to burn? A rack to turn?" The one-eyed warrior sing-songed. One corner of his mouth curled up impishly. "I've a song or two I'll wager you've not heard, Lord. An off-color love ballad involving a Tsiru-jin and a fire demon?"

A breath of a chuckle drifted toward him. "What would you call such a ditty, boy? 'Roasted Love'? 'Frozen Passions'?"

The kneeling man casually removed his scouter and raised his head a little further. The boyish beauty of his features was strangely accented by the angry scar and eye-patch. "'The Melted Heart', Lord."

The sighing voice of his master seemed intrigued. "Do you hope to melt my heart, child? I know you have come to beg for your friend's life."

"He will be needed if the Kais move against us, Lord." He thought he saw a flicker of fear on the alabaster face before him. Steeling himself for what might be his last action this side of hell, he reached out and ran one finger coaxingly down the three-pronged foot. Behind him, the Tsiru-jin courtiers hummed in jealous fury at such audacity.

"Give me Trunks to safe guard, Lord Frieza. He only becomes…unmanageable when we are separated. I will pledge my life on his good behavior." He smiled into the monster's face, his own face automatically taking on its most appealing expression. "What can I do to sway your heart, Lord?"

One bone white hand stroked his thick black hair as though her were a much-loved, favorite dog. "Sing that foolish song for me, Goten."

-

Time had begun to have some meaning again. He hung suspended on the western spire of the Tsiru-sei palace, icicles and frost on his long hair and numb wind-burned face. The sun was going down. The nights on Tsiru-sei dropped to 80 below in the summers. He would not survive the night, and was somehow able to summon up a bit of pleasure at the thought. An end to pain. Even the nothingness of separation of body and spirit that Hell offered seemed inviting He closed his eyes, ready to surrender consciousness as he hadn't since he was a small child. A harsh sob and a spike of familiar ki jerked him back to awareness. A "snick", and the ki-dampening slave collar Frieza used on the most powerful of his prisoners was pulled off.

"Oh, Trunks," Goten's hands were gently tugging at the steel spikes they had pounded through his wrists at dawn.

"Leave it, Goten," he tried to say. He couldn't move his mouth. Goten seemed to hear the thought anyway, because he was growling in angry refusal.

"No way," Goten said. "You're not allowed to die on me, Trunks. Do you hear me, you crazy son of a bitch? You're not allowed!"

Goten wrapped one hand around each of the spikes they'd used to crucify him to the tower spire and tore them out in one movement. Trunks had time to draw in one sharp gulp of air before the pain rose up and turned the world black.

_

He awoke to burning pain and an odd, soothing warmth. Goten's face blurred slowly into view.

"I've packed you down in med patches. The frosty bitch wouldn't let me use the regen tank. He said he wants the scars to help you 'reflect on your sins'. Just don't try to move yet."

"My sins…" Trunks chest caught in a hitch. Goten had been told what had happened. Frieza had ordered a seventy- percent casualty rate on the world Trunks had taken two days ago. The indigenous population were reported to be intelligent and highly malleable, and Frieza had meant the remaining thirty- percent to be used as technical support slaves. Trunks had not left so much as a microbe alive on the planet's surface.

"I started thinking about how their lives as slaves would be worse than a good clean death," Trunks told him. "Then I guess I just stopped thinking all together. I started killing and I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop!"

"So you lost your shit in the heat of battle," Goten said uncomfortably. "It happens."

"They are better off aren't they, Goten?" Trunks voice had begun to take on a vague, disconnected, almost childlike tone that was becoming more and more frequent of late. It was somehow more frightening to Goten than any of his friend's insane bouts of rage

"Oh, Kami, Goten," Trunks sobs had tapered down into jagged breaths. "Do you think our parents can see us in Heaven?"

Goten looked away. "I hope not."

"They'd be so ashamed…I dreamed last night that they were all alive, Goten. That Frieza told the truth when he told us they were in hiding. I dreamed they finally decided to come rescue us." Trunks laughed unevenly. "What do you think they'd make of us now?"

"They wouldn't make anything of us, because they're all dead!" Goten said harshly. "Don't talk nonsense,Trunks."

"You went to him and asked him for my life, didn't you?" Trunks murmured.

Goten shrugged, inwardly relieved at the change of subject. The grey fog behind Trunks eyes seemed to recede for the moment. "Ask, beg, cajole—a bit of groveling here, a bit of judicious flirting there. He was in a good mood."

Trunks closed his eyes. He could imagine what the price of his life had been. "Goten…"

Goten shrugged again as though it were nothing. "He was…Well, he was a she."

"What?"

"His time is almost on him." Goten said. "He's completely into his female cycle—and I mean to the point where someone ought to tell him to put on a bra!" Trunks uttered a weak cackle. "Can you imagine waking up one morning to find you're slowly turning into a girl? Creepy, eh?"

"The Tsiru-jin change gender to female when they are bearing their young," Trunks murmured. "It's natural for them. I would rather have died than see you go to him, Goten."

"And I would rather have died than see you dead," Goten said flatly. "Anyway, it was no big deal. He was feeling all hormonal and motherly. All I did was sing for him and make him laugh." He didn't meet the other man's eyes, knowing his friend saw through the lie. "The Tsiru-jin Empire should have a bouncing baby heir—or eel , or whatever—any day now. It's my fault you got into deep shit anyway. I shouldn't have left you to do that job by yourself."

"Where did you go?" Trunks voice was slightly slurred. The trank in the med patches was finally kicking in.

"I followed that rumor we heard to Madran and had a talk with the Mastertech," Goten replied. "I've found Daruma, Trunks!"

"Where?!" Trunks tried to rise weakly and Goten pushed him gently back down.

"Sleep, Trunks," Goten said fiercely. "Rest and get better. All of this long nightmare is almost over. I swear to you, Trunks," he told Trunks sleeping form,"Frieza will not live to see his firstborn draw breath!"


	4. Reunions

Haven was a lush, green world. They made landfall at dawn, the yellow sun was just peeking over the horizon, illuminating the sparkling, pre-fab new city outside. Zarbon had placed the travelers from Earth in a large, comfortable waiting room in one of the makeshift city's main admin buildings. He was currently involved in a heated debate with the under-ground's other elders. They were more than a little leery of trusting Saiyans of any description.

Bulma leaned forward studying the technical schematics on the console before her in rapt wonder. Some subdued voice of propriety told her she should not be finding any sort of joy in anything when her life had just come unraveled overnight. But the perfect mathematical beauty and scale of the mechanism before her was almost unimaginable.

"It's wonderful, isn't it?" Bra said shyly. The girl had edged nearer to her mother by slow degrees as though she thought Bulma might object to her closeness.

"Zarbon said something about hiding whole worlds," Bulma said breathlessly, "but…Kami! The crazy thing is, I've been working on something just like this." Her hand strayed to the encapsulated silver rings of her transport invention on the capsule tool belt around her waist. "I wasn't quite able to work out the kinks. I would put things in the entrance ring port and sometimes it would come out the other ring, and then sometimes it would just be…gone. But looking at your SPE specs, I can see now where I went wrong."

"I helped configure the Spatial Phase Engine for this planet," Bra said proudly. "And I developed this as well." She held up a hand-sized replica of the massive engine displayed on the view screen before them. "It's a personal SPE. We use them for espionage. You activate it while wearing it and, just like this planet, you are neither here nor there. You're halfway teleported between one point in space and another. Keep it, Mama," another shy smile. "You're not as strong as the rest of us, not physically. It'll help keep you safe—invisible and untouchable."

"Not quite invisible," Zarbon said from the doorway. He looked liked he'd developed a serious headache in the last few hours. "The SPE's give off a faint ripple of energy from source and destination coordinates, and once every 2 hours, we must fully materialize at the destination coordinates and rephase. It's only 3/100's of a second that we're visible and solid, but that would be all Frieza would need if he knew our secret." He eyed the men. "The elders have agreed to let you stay, but they'd ask you to keep out of sight as much as possible. Most of the refugees are terrified of Saiyans, either from old stories, or…" He stopped awkwardly.

"Or from having their planets demolished by Trunks and Goten," Vegeta finished tonelessly. He stood gazing out the window at nothing in particular. Chi-Chi looked him in the eye, something she couldn't remember ever having done. She had been uncharacteristically subdued since leaving Earth. Now she held the gaze of this man she'd never thought to have anything more than a flat dislike for, and asked the question she had told herself she would not.

"How did he do it, Vegeta? They were good boys. They loved to fight, but they weren't killers, and they knew right from wrong. My Goten…What did he do to them to change them so much?"

Vegeta stared at her a long moment before answering. "Everything," he said quietly. If he expected the satisfaction of seeing her crumple into a sobbing mess, he was disappointed. She set her jaw. "They're still the same boys we raised."

"They are men," he said flatly. "They have slain the population of Earth a hundred times over by now. Don't expect your baby boy to come running into your arms when he sees you, because that boy is dead. Frieza killed him 15 years ago."

"Your own people, the Saiyans, taught you to be a killer long before Frieza ever did!" Chi-Chi heard her own voice rising in anger. "If you can manage to live a halfway normal life, they can be completely normal and happy! So don't you tell me there's no hope, you cold-hearted asshole!"

"Chi-Chi!" Goku took her in his arms and pulled away from Vegeta, afraid she might attack him physically. "I'm all right!" She said fiercely, burying herself in her husband's embrace. "I'm all right," she said,softer.

After a moment, Gohan spoke in a quiet, shocked voice. "Mom just said 'asshole'." And they all, except a scowling Vegeta, erupted into near-hysterical laughter.

Zarbon was also frowning in confusion. "Earthlings are mad," Vegeta muttered. "Don't ask me to explain it."

Zarbon nodded. "I told you before I thought we could help each other. Time is a factor now that our secrecy has been compromised, so I'm taking you to see our prisoner now. Follow me."

As they traversed the huge complex of the base world's central offices, Bulma was amazed at the variety of different life forms gathered together on one planet. She lost count at some point of the number of species she saw. A low roar of space ship engines shook the building. "We're evacuating the families first," Zarbon explained.

"Could they attack so soon after getting the information from Madran?" Gohan asked. Zarbon nodded grimly.

Bulma hung the personal SPE Bra had given her from her tool belt and began to lose herself again in the blueprints she'd downloaded into her own minicomp as they walked along. Bra hovered close to her, offering bits of information and answering her questions on this and that.

Zarbon grinned as he strode beside Vegeta. "I knew Bra hadn't gotten her brains from you."

Vegeta glanced back at his wife and daughter. "Thank you," he said quietly.

The blue-skinned man eyed him. "Where is Prince Vegeta of Vegetasei and what have you done with him?"

"Smartass," Vegeta snorted.

"You're welcome," Zarbon said seriously. "She changed me, you know. Wormed her way right into my cold, reptilian heart in the first day. It's amazing how one thing in the universe you actually give a damn about can open you up to giving a damn about everything and everybody else." Vegeta grunted something that might have been an agreement.

They arrived at their destination after an almost endless elevator ride downward. The oppressive feeling of being miles beneath the surface of the planet was all around them. And something else as well.

"Evil," Kakarott hissed. Vegeta glanced at the other Saiyan curiously as they stepped out of the elevator car into the dimly lit lab beyond. Kakarott was tensed like a cat with its back arched, every nerve on edge. "There's something terrible in here, Vegeta," he said. "Can't you feel it? It's so strong!"

"What is it, Zarbon?" Vegeta asked.

Zarbon's face was a study in the artfully blank mask of the courtier and whore who had survived fifty years in Frieza's service. He did not answer, only turned and strode toward the dull red glow at the center of the great bunker-like room. There was no choice but to follow him.

Bulma felt her hand go numb as Bra seized it in her own. The girl's frightened face didn't reassure her. "Bra, you're breaking Mommy's hand," she said gently.

The younger woman looked sheepish. "Sorry, Mama."

Hand in hand, they followed the others to the center on the room, where a hunched figure sat surrounded by the laboratory's single light source. He was old beyond Bulma's previous understanding of the word, frail and almost skeletal. He emanated a pervading sense of bad, of wrongness, so strong even Bulma's weak human senses could detect it.

"Daruma," Vegeta said softly.

"We thought he would be able to tell us the secrets of his dragon balls," Zarbon said. "Then we might have some kind of an edge against Frieza. No such luck."

"He's told you nothing?"

Zarbon shook his head. "Just ravings and nonsense. He's mad. We tracked him down few weeks ago and imprisoned him here. He's pretty docile—just sits there like a lump most of the time. Then two days ago, he became coherent for a few minutes. He asked to speak to the "blue machine wright from Earth." I thought it was meaningless until you showed up," he told Bulma. "I think he meant you, Mistress." She started. "If there's any chance he could tell us anything that might be of use—"

"She's not going anywhere near that thing!" Vegeta said sharply.

"He can't get out, Poppa." Bra said. "I have two SPE's rigged to loop back on each other. If he tries to move out of the circle of red light, he's instantly teleported back inside." She checked the readouts on the small control console that sat just outside the light cell. "It's working. He can't go anywhere."

Vegeta regarded her and his angry scowl softened slightly. "All right," he said finally.

Bulma carefully approached the edge of the prison of red light. Vegeta moved to stand beside her, tensed like a spring. Goku stepped up on her left as well, hovering protectively. She didn't resent it. The waves of… of blackness issuing from the emaciated Namek were almost overwhelming.

"Daruma?" Her voice sounded too loud into the hollow room. The thing in the cell twitched at the sound of her voice, and scuttled slowly to the edge of the circle.

"The craft-mistress from Earth." The voice was like the rustle of dead leaves. "Blue is my favorite color…"

"Did you want to speak to me?" She asked.

"Your son…the fair haired Saiyan warrior with the sword…visited me in my tomb years ago…I was sealed in stasis in the bowls of the caverns beneath the Royal Palace of Tsiru-sei by Frieza. To keep me from any misfortune, you understand. Should harm come to me, the Red Dragon Balls would be useless."

"You saw Trunks—" Bulma began.

"Years and years ago, I think it was…time is not as is was to me before I wrought Red Soraku's dragon balls. I was greedy, and impatient and very, very stupid. Dragon Balls take a measure of the craftsman's soul, essence, and ki in their forging. The mightier the dragon conjured, the more they require. Five wishes…." He cackled softly. "Half my soul is gone, and still I live on. Hell will seem a mercy to me, for there at least, I will be whole." He raised his head and met her eyes. She would not have thought that anything this side of Hell could look so damned.

"Trunks," she prodded gently.

"He found my tomb—how, I do not know—and awakened me. He asked me for my secrets as you do now. He wept, and spoke of all that he had loved and lost, and asked how he might regain it. He spoke of his father, the great Saiyan warrior prince, and of his mother. Is it true what he said, Lady? Can you craft and build any mechanism within the scope of your imagination?"

"I…"

"She can," Vegeta said firmly.

"So then…" Daruma bared his sharp, yellowed teeth in a death's head smile. "The boy was discovered in his pilfery, and in the confusion, I escaped. I imagine it went rather ill for him. The Lord of Tsiru-sei is most inventive in his punishments." Dry, hacking laughter.

"You rotting, green fuck!" Vegeta snarled.

This only seemed to amused the Namek more. "I owe the boy my freedom. So, I will tell you what I did not have time to tell him."

A seismic rumble rolled through the room, knocking Bulma to the floor. A sound like depth charges detonated underwater shook the bunker's foundation a second time.

"Tell me," Bulma said.

The others were looking up as though they could see through the ceiling.

Gohan gasped. "Is that-?"

"Yes," Vegeta's bleak voice.

"Unmake them, Earth woman," the green rictus head grinned at her. "Unmake the Red Dragon Balls and all of Red Soraku's wishes will unravel."

Another depth charge, this time closer. "Destroy them?" Bulma asked, desperately. Whatever was going on above ground, this little interview was about to end abruptly.

"Get ready," Goku told the others.

"What is it?" Chi-Chi cried. "What's happening?"

The ceiling began to buckle above their heads as though it were being bored through with a giant jackhammer.

"My death is coming," Daruma smiled. "Unmake them, craft-mistress. Devise a way to make them be not. Do you understand my meaning? Then all the wishes and all the events that resulted will unravel as though they never happened. Including Frieza's resurrection and and his theft of your young."

"Dad," Gohan was saying, "We can't fight them!"

"We may not have a choice," Bra said angrily. "Right now they're butchering all those refugees you just saw above ground!"

"Here they come," Vegeta hissed. He grabbed Bulma and threw her to the floor, covering her body with his an instant before the ceiling dissolved into a shower of molten shrapnel. On the floor beside her, Bulma saw that Gohan had done the same to his startled mother. A huge chunk of glowing steel struck the console that held Daruma's cell intact, smashing it to pieces, and the red light surrounding the Namek winked out. He did not flinch or make any move to run. Through the pall of heat and smoke, two luminous figures emerged and strode toward the ancient Namek, both burning inside halos of Super Saiyan light.

"I've come to hear the rest of your story, old man," Trunks told Daruma.

"Trunks," Bulma gasped.

Both young men's head snapped around in unison, and Bulma found herself staring into the eyes of the stranger that was her son.

And everything seemed to stop.

No one moved or spoke, they simply stared at each other in shock.

Then Goten broke the silence as his eyes fell on his mother. "Mom." He took one hesitant step forward. "Mom?" He said disbelieving.

"Goten," she said softly. He was beside her so quickly she couldn't follow the motion, shaking his head slowly as though he did not believe his eyes. His eye… "Oh, Goten," Chi-Chi whispered sadly. "Your poor little eye…" Her finger traced the scar that ran from under the eye patch.

"How, Mom?" He glanced around, seeing the others, suddenly. Something like a smile was beginning to tug on the corner of his mouth.

"It was all true," Trunks voice was low. It was so much like his father's Bulma shivered.

"What's true?" She reached out trying to place one hand on his face. It had suddenly begun to twist horribly.

Goten was already turning apprehensively, recognizing the note in Trunks voice.

"Trunks, don't-"

The air around Bulma seemed to ignite, and she had a brief sense of vertigo as Vegeta snatched her up like a rag doll and threw her out of the path of the oncoming blast. Then nothing.

Vegeta deflected a second burst, this one aimed with deadly accuracy at himself. The energy pod ricocheted off his clenched fist and struck the ancient Namek where he had sat patiently awaiting his own death.

_

Frieza felt the death stroke sing through the dragon balls, and turned his mind outward, tracing the thread of the link back to its source. And he saw them. The ruby lips bowed daintily and Frieza began to chuckle delightedly.

_

"You left us!" Trunks screamed, and launched himself at his father, who met him midway with a hoarse cry of anger. "You all saved yourselves and left us to Frieza!" Trunks began shrieking, writhing in Vegeta's stronger grip. He held onto the younger man grimly, thanking all the powers that were that the boy had not yet achieved Super Saiyan 3.

Slowly, methodically he began sending bursts of ki into his son's body, just strong enough to disrupt his power and wear him down. This unthinking rage couldn't last for long. If he could deplete enough of Trunks ki, they could all hold him down and tell him-Without warning, Trunks seemed to collapse in his arms. It took him a few seconds to realize what had happened. In the micro-second before the last restraining blow Vegeta had dealt him, Trunks had suddenly powered down completely. Vegeta stared in numb horror at the scorched whole he had just put through his son's heart.

"Poppa, why?" Trunks whispered. And died.

Vegeta sank to the floor, holding his son's lifeless body in his arms, and wailed like a broken-hearted child. 


End file.
